Radiology is a medical technique that uses imaging to diagnose and treat patients for health related issues. An array of imaging techniques are used in radiology, like X-ray radiography, ultrasound, computed tomography (CT), nuclear medicine, positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
The patient is exposed to radiology imaging technology by capturing three dimensional radiology images, e.g. of a knee joint, that can provide information about the human body's internal structures. This occurs in a medical care facility, e.g. at a radiology department of a hospital. The images and the information obtained are forwarded to an implant design center for design of an implant and resulting control software (CAD/CAM), e.g. to improve or repair damaged cartilage, e.g. in a damaged human knee.
In conventional systems implants may be manufactured as surgical kits in standard sizes and might be supplied with standard guides to support in implant surgery, e.g. to support in determining the position and mounting angle of the implant.
A problem with conventional systems is that implants are poorly customized to patients that may lead to replacement of unnecessary large areas of undamaged cartilage bad alignment of the top surface of the implant to the cartilage top surface being replaced, which in turn might lead to reduced or no improvement of the condition of the person being subjected to implant surgery.
Another problem is that three dimensional representations of surfaces in the body, e.g. a 3D surface derived from a radiology 3D image of an articulating surface of a joint, that are generated based on three dimensional radiology images are generally not as smooth as the surface of healthy cartilage tissue.
Yet another problem is to generate or derive an accurate three-dimensional representation of a surface of a joint based on 3D radiology images and a segmentation process, wherein the segmentation process is controlled by a segmentation process control parameter set.
Yet another problem is to estimate an undamaged cartilage top surface in an area with damaged cartilage top surface by obtain a segmentation process control parameter set that will enable improved manufacturing of a patient customized surgical kit for cartilage repair.
Therefore, there is a need for a system and method to improve manufacturing of a surgical kit for cartilage repair.